Free Agent
by countessofbiscuit
Summary: In which Ahsoka falls in with more misguided youth, drinks to forget (it doesn't work), and wastes no time broadening her career horizons with her boyfriend's delinquent kid brother. (A/N: an Ahsoka & Boba mission fic, with heavy Rexsoka background radiation)
1. Chapter 1

"Look, if it isn't me, it'll just be someone else."

"Oh yeah, yeah, 'nothing personal,' right?"

"Don't flatter yourself, Okami. I never do _personal_."

 _"But I do."_

Ahsoka waited till he'd spied her in the rafters before dropping down onto the table. No point startling him into a shootout. "And I'd really rather this not be you."

Boba Fett had gone from bored to cagey to outraged in the span of three seconds, but only someone who knew his face as well as she did would've noticed. He'd removed his helmet early in the proceedings, unmasking around this mechanic with a nonchalance Ahsoka found … interesting.

When he finally dropped the blaster from Nyx's chest, he wouldn't even huff in her general direction, scowling at a distant corner of the garage.

"And what's it to you? They kick you down here to become some kind of anti-bounty vigilante?"

"No," she said, crossing her arms, "this is just a coincidence of galactic proportions—but I never have liked you in this line of work."

"What, trying to make a living?"

"Profiting off the misfortune of others."

Constitutionally unable to keep his trap shut for one karkin' minute, Nyx ventured to butt in. "Profit? He rarely breaks even. You wanna know _why_ that couch smells? Well, you're looking at him."

At that, Boba retrained the blaster on Nyx and Ahsoka rolled her eyes. She toyed briefly with the idea of relinquishing the idiot and appropriating this poorly-run establishment. "Teenaged cockiness" had a distinctive vibe in the Force and as two male brands of it harassed her senses, she was reminded of Lux—and why she always regretted "taking a break" with Rex.

Was this a hiatus? Or mutual desertion? She was doing her level best not to think about it by making one _reckless_ —kriff, she couldn't hear that word in any voice but Obi-Wan's—decision after another.

"Stow it, Nyx," she said, dropping her eyes from Boba, finding she didn't really want to meet his gaze either. He'd buzzed off the long, non-regulation mop, and now all her homesickness saw was a grumpy cadet Rex. She fished in her pockets for the remainder of the stipend Obi-Wan had pooled together. "What's the price on his head?"

"More than you can pay, Jedi."

"I'm not a Jedi anymore," Ahsoka replied with more conviction than she really felt, fingers brushing against all of four, maybe five, credit chips. New clothes were expensive, and that used speeder even more so. She had no sabers nor blasters and was reluctant to use the Force … extracurricularly. And being half-sloshed never helped.

It was looking like she really would have to surrender Nyx. This kid wasn't just Mando, he was pure _Fett_ , well-armed and with a disposition like a crabbed, half-starved anooba—his sunken cheeks said he probably was half-starved, and that meant money talked a little louder than usual.

She was hungry, too. And curious. She wanted to know how this would sit with her.

"I'm … uh, more of a freelancer these days. Need a second for a job?"

Boba gawped at her like she'd just proposed a date, a snog, marriage, or all three—and maybe in whatever mercenary subculture he operated in, she had. It wouldn't be the first social blunder of her week down under.

"What would I do with a Jed—" he spat, before he stopped short and gave a few vacant blinks that deepened into contemplation of something unsaid.

Quelling whatever objections he had to a partner—let alone a Temple brat—seemed the matter of a moment. Boba holstered his blaster and reached around Nyx to grab his helmet. "It's your lucky day, Okami—well, hour maybe. Pintu's price will make you popular."

Now it was Nyx's turn to look offended. At whom, it was initially hard to say.

"You're just going to _leave?_ " he scoffed, the incredulous rise of his brow exaggerated as he craned his head up at her. "With this kid?"

Ahsoka tried never to be cruel, but she found presumption, however cute, particularly irksome. That couch _did_ smell, but he'd been awfully slow to shove off it the past couple nights.

"Uh, yeah." She hopped off the table and strolled over to her speeder, the repairs for which were now arguably settled, and more conveniently than she might've imagined. "It's been fun, Nyx. Thanks for all your help. And best of luck with the dianoga larvae—I will literally never unsee that."

She slung a leg over her bike, revved the engine, gave a two-fingered salute, and made to zoom off into the sunset—only Boba was suddenly in her path, grabbing the handlebar and motioning contemptuously for her to scoot back.

"Not so fast, Tano."

"Ugh, really?"

"Thought you volunteered for a job—or do you want to do us both a favor, mindfuck Okami for me and we split the bounty?"

" _No_. But can't I drive my own speeder?"

"You're working for me. I drive."

Ahsoka suddenly recalled the murderous baby face that was frogmarched into Coruscant's maximum security prison. "Wait. Are you even _legal?"_

There were a hundred and one things about Boba Fett that almost certainly were not legal—his very creation had been proscribed under Republic law and she didn't remember him being _released_ from said prison—but somehow he could in fact produce a valid Republic Class-3 speeder permit. The existence of "Jeks Froxum" was probably a forgery, but that permit was not, and any fight she had left was melting under the lingering influence of whatever Nyx had distilled in that repurposed fuel pod.

Actually, letting the thirteen-year-old drive was probably for the best.

" _Fine_." She shoved back from the pedals and allowed him to swing up in front.

Something about the movement swept his signature like a wave across her mind. While none of the men had ever felt the same to her, she was suddenly face first in Rex's _shadow_ , but gripping someone half his size, shooting out of a stale garage and up the vertical portal at a hundred klicks an hour.

And it was disorienting as hell.

Once they levelled off in some surface channel, Ashoka dropped her forehead against the hard nape of Boba's neck. She willed the air roaring over her montrals to drown her restless mind in a way that shitty alcohol clearly couldn't. Turning off the Force was impossible—fuck how she'd tried this past week—but she'd settle for tuning out her inner turmoil, until the tide of her new unanchored life threw her up against the next fresh distraction.

Which, apparently, was bounty hunting with a known Republic outlaw?

With a start, she realized just what she might have committed herself to. "Hey. _Hey!_ " she shouted over the passing wind as she gave Boba's helmet a few thumps. "Pull over!"

He surprised her by complying, drifting below three opposing lanes of vehicular madness with a skill that said even if he hadn't had a permit, she shouldn't have doubted his driving. As he brought them to hover against a building, he inclined his helmet over his shoulder in irritated silence.

"This job—I won't … hurt anyone. Or use the Force. I'm just a second set of clean hands, okay?"

She held them up at her sides as if to demonstrate the limited extent of what she brought to the table. More than he'd ever get for free, less than he'd probably need.

"Relax. You might actually enjoy it," he said, before slipping back back into the ineffable stream of Coruscant's traffic.

He seemed confident in his brevity—and he didn't try to dump her off the back of the speeder. So Ahsoka relaxed. Rex's shadow was still there and, Force help her, she sank into it.

She shouldn't have allowed herself the lapse.

Wallowing in even the shade of him was enough to recall the events of last week. They ascended in her mind like those ominous larties in the rain, frightening a hundred blissful memories into the shadows and illuminating, in sharp relief, the agonizing truth she couldn't quite square.

Her Captain had _chased_ her, pistols in hand, just like the rest of 'em.

She'd jumped. He'd watched.

And when she'd come to in that cold red cell, alone and miserable, the redolence of him clung to her shoulders. Like he'd carried and abandoned her there himself.

A sickening cocktail of fury, dread, and deserter's guilt congealed in her stomach, compounding the offence of day drinking, and she had to turn her face into the wind, inhaling deeply, willing herself not to vomit.

And trying not to wonder what Rex would say if he saw her now, zipping around town tailgun with Boba fucking Fett.

("That brat? Look, we're all fond of Jango, naturally, with his karked-up sense of honor and gett'se. And yeah, descending among the cadets now and then like some kind of little god wouldn't have been so insulting if he had one honorable bone in his unaccelerated body. _Vod'kyramud._ "

"He didn't want to kill any of them. That was all Sing."

"Doesn't matter. _Vod'kyramud._ ")

Ahsoka blinked her eyes open, mindlessly absorbing the collective blur of speeders and skyscrapers in the hazy dusk. A vista opened up, and in the distance she saw a column of cruisers and carriers, ascending and descending, as if on strings tied to the twin spires of Republic HQ, sitting squat and immutable below.

She might not have to wonder what Rex would think. She knew this quarter.

 _Clone Zone._

In fact, it looked like they were making a beeline for a certain club. She lifted her head to glance over Boba's other shoulder. Once she could make out unit distinctions among the troopers milling about on the landing pad, she really panicked.

"No no no—turn around! We can't go to 79's!" Ahsoka squealed, furiously smacking Boba's hand and throwing her weight backwards, as if to physically halt the speeder, and on the verge of using the Force itself.

" _Wayii!_ Chill out! We're not going to 79's."

"Then pick some other route!"

Whether he was complying again, or simply continuing his original trajectory, she didn't know, but Boba angled the speeder sharply down. He brought them to land in a snub little alleyway some levels below 79's. It was grody, dimly lit, and decorated with the usual detritus of an overlooked stratum. Boba walked a little ways ahead and paused next to a nondescript door beneath a dead neon sign. Ahsoka couldn't see a handle. Wherever they were going, it wasn't through front door. She supposed Boba wasn't really a front-door kind of person and wondered if that was now her fate, too. While he murmured into a comm unit on the wall, her montrals picked up the the low, rhythmic reverberation of house music. There was a barely audible click and Boba pushed the door open, the vibrations inside temporarily deafening her as she acclimated to the club thrum.

Immediately before them, bathed in magenta light, was a long elliptical bar. At first, it seemed that was all there was—a bar, devoid of patrons at this relatively early hour. But it became clear that the club extended beyond the other side, opening up into a interior pulsing with colored lights and unclothed limbs.

A Zeltron may have intercepted them, beckoning Boba to follow her, but Ahsoka was really too distracted to notice.

Establishments like this, she well knew, were interwoven into the galaxy's infrastructure—Coruscant's upper levels were literally and figuratively speaking, underpinned by what went on here. She'd caught glimpses of shielded holos. Hells, she possessed a few of her own, more compact, and therefore more easily concealed, than the naughty holonovels her Ma— … _Anakin_ had once been in the habit of confiscating. And she suspected nothing occurred here that she and Rex (and some other guys … once or twice) hadn't tried in the receptive headspace of a post-battle comedown.

But something about … the audience. The shameless display with _strangers_. It was if all the lust generated in 79's dripped down here and was shaken, not stirred, with a measure of abandoned hedonism and poured into a synth-crystal glass. She didn't know if Rex would have loved it, or if the silly pleasure he took in a public polish was limited to his brothers.

Speaking of, that dude they just passed with his face buried in a Mikkian's breasts was _definitely_ a clone. Boba took the opportunity to swipe his bowl of nuts and his neglected drink, something dark and neat and definitely overproof by the smell of it.

The Zeltron opened a door and gestured them into a small room. It had sheet of one-way permaglass that looked out into the club, perhaps catering to those who were particular in their voyeurism, or those who preferred a clandestine business meeting with a view. Ahsoka recalled all the times she'd crashed shady tête-a-têtes like the one they were having now. Boba collapsed onto the black lethris sofa, removing his helmet and casually resting his boot on his knee, looking very much at home, while she perched herself on the opposite end and tried not to stare at the denizens and dancers.

"Umm," she began, slowly tearing her eyes away from a topless Togruta she'd spotted. "What were you doing _here?_ "

Boba shrugged. "I didn't know it was a sex club. I just thought they served mussels." He mumbled something into his drink about "a misunderstanding."

She didn't get the chance to press the matter before the door cracked open and the Misunderstanding craned her head inside, dangling a fiery red lek that was probably as long as Ahsoka was tall.

The Twi'lek was familiar in a way Ahsoka couldn't quite place until she opened her mouth, greeting Boba with a skeptical "You're back." It was just enough for her to glimpse two rows of filed teeth, and Ahsoka realized she was looking upon a minor 501st celebrity.

 _The Ruby Rancor_. Ahsoka had seen her baring her thighs in homemade pin-up posters around the barracks, and baring her fangs on the nose of one or two gunships in various companies. She was imposing and maybe a little scary, if Ahsoka was in the habit of being intimidated by anybody. Her long face was tempered by delicately set grey eyes and a nicely proportioned mouth, and she was actually very pretty, though she probably didn't stare at many ceilings.

"If that job's still free, we'll take it," Boba began. "You'll have to run it by her first. And I take half upfront."

Ruby eased into the room, keeping her head dipped beneath the frame and only straightening up to her immense height once inside. She hung back by the door, worrying her sharp nails together as she glanced between the two teenagers.

Boba elaborated, indicating to Ahsoka with his empty glass. "She's ex-Jedi. Demobbed five-oh-first."

"Karkin' hell, Fett, can you not—"

Ruby's grey eyes grew the size of remote droids, and she was on Ahsoka like a bolt, planting herself on the sofa between them. " _You're_ the fugitive. You broke out of the Republic prison."

Honestly, did no one get the news down here? Sure, she and Nyx had spent the better part of Day Two _deactivating_ (vandalizing) her obsolete wanted holos across a ten-klick radius, but she was _cleared_ and could've sworn that trial had been broadcast.

It was now Day Seven and Ahsoka Tano was done explaining herself.

"What's it to you, Ruby?"

Ahsoka hadn't meant to let the moniker slip out—was that a name she'd chosen? She felt her lekku darken with shame as Ruby arched her severe brow.

After a tense moment, Ruby simply replied, "It's relevant," not bothering, or perhaps not deigning, to correct her.

Ahsoka crossed her arms and dropped back into the sofa, trying to address the suspiciously silent Boba past the broad Twi'lek in the way. "What kind of gig is this? And why does it require a job interview?"

Ruby answered for him. "You're not collecting a head on a plate, you're rescuing an inmate."

 _Rescuing an inmate._ That was a nice euphemism for something that could stain Ahsoka's cleared record like a gutted Quarren.

"What?!"

Ruby sighed and jerked her thumb over her shoulder. "Did he just drag you in off the block?" she asked, her eyes narrowing. "You weren't down here looking for a _different_ kind of job, were you?"

It was all Ahsoka could do not to laugh. But … she was technically homeless and no stranger to exploiting base desires for strategic, if not for monetary, gain. Ruby could be forgiven for the assumption, especially in this economy.

"No," said Ahsoka, firmly.

"Good, because they have a shitty ex-offender policy here, fresh little Tog or no."

Boba leaned forward "The only job she's after is the one she owes me. So I'd appreciate it if you cut the phobium and briefed her."

Ruby twisted in her seat to look at Boba, one of her absurdly long lekku smacking Ahsoka's shoulder. "And why are you suddenly so keen, dollface?"

Boba tumbled his glass in his hands with that same fidgety dexterity many clones shared. "Found a Jedi jailbird," he mumbled without looking up.

Ruby eyed Ahsoka again. "Seems strangely convenient." After a further pause, she shoved a hand down her brassiere and pulled out three identical keycards, each subtly stamped with the insignia of the Coruscant Guard. "But as your people say, the Force works in mysterious ways."

She held them out before Ahsoka like they were a hand she definitely wanted to play. "A trooper from the five-oh-first is being held in the Republic Military Detention Center. I'll pay you handsomely to extract him."

The galaxy suddenly felt ten sizes too small. Not just _any_ prison then, but the very durasteel dungeon where her life had gone sideways—worse than sideways. Where it fucking imploded. That was the most distressing part of Ruby's statement, but Ahsoka's first voiced thought was, "Who?"

The frost in Ruby's grey eyes had long since chilled her pretty features into something wholly unforgiving. "And what's it to you, deserter?"

If the Twi'lek had actually bitten her, it would've hurt less. As it was, her words dripped with contempt, and Ahsoka's spirit was threadbare enough that the sting soaked straight through. She was too stunned to be angry, but it was Fett who mediated. In his own way.

"His pet name is meaningless in prison," he said decidedly. "It's the designation—the number—that counts. You have that, right?"

Ruby settled back into the sofa, draping her thick lekku across the top. She nodded, her gaze somewhere beyond the piece of bland cityscape art tacked to the opposite wall. "CT-5383."

She glanced at Ahsoka, as if to gauge her reaction.

"I don't deal in numbers," Ahsoka bit back. "Just names."

"Dogma."


	2. Chapter 2

Of all possible names, Ahsoka hadn't expected that one. That was the name of a dead man.

She had few details—either about Umbara or Dogma's fate—but she did remember standing next to Anakin, the mounting tension in his mechno-hand perceptible in her tips, as some flabby bureaucrat from the Adjutant Corps informed him that Clone Trooper 5383 had already been arraigned and found guilty of treason; whether he would be be summarily decommissioned was pending investigation of the "extenuating circumstances," but he would not be returned to the 501st.

The pistons in Anakin's forearm had snapped entirely at that.

Brother-killers might receive a lifetime consignment to some sithshitting penal unit, but fragging got you a one-way ticket to Kamino, whatever the "extenuating circumstances." The only uncertain thing about it was whether you'd be executed immediately, or if the longnecks would vivisect your brain first.

And in Ahsoka's opinion, the only thing scarier than what had happened to Dogma was how it had almost been Rex.

("What went wrong?"

"... Everything."

And the story she could never tease out, tied up in knots somewhere unfathomable behind his golden eyes.)

She must have looked a doozy, because when she rocketed to her feet in confusion, Ruby unfroze and took Ahsoka's hand, gently but decidedly guiding her back down onto the sofa. Even Boba was staring at her.

"That—that can't be right. Dogma was sent back to Kamino."

At least, that had been everyone's best guess; when "everything" goes wrong in a campaign, and the trooper in question has no rights, talk of an investigation was probably only lip service. But she had to be matter-of-fact about this, stick to mission-pertinent information, or it would do her head in.

"There's no record of that," Ruby countered.

Now that she had to explain it to civilians, to _outsiders_ , the matter of discipline in the Grand Army of the Republic took on the most sour taste in her mouth. Ahsoka struggled to get the words out. "No, there probably wouldn't be. The record probably just says 'decommissioned,' or at best"—at worst really, because you'd be dead on arrival regardless—"'reassigned.'"

"You're referring to reconditioning, I take it? Brainwashing?"

"That's not—"

"Honey, even Guardsmen can be made to talk. My intel says Dogma was remanded to the Republic prison. And he's _never_ left. These"—she shoved the keycards into Ahsoka's palm—"will open doors for you there. Which ones … well, that's what I'm paying you professionals to figure out."

Ahsoka gawped at the Twi'lek, still puzzled as to why _she_ was so keen. How did she know Dogma? An uptight trooper with a strangely fumbling grasp of his own brothers' social mores, like the Kaminoans had kept him in his glass jar two years too long. The boys may have bundled him out to a place like this as a shiny, but she couldn't imagine him hanging around, much less getting familiar with Ruby here.

But if Ruby were just the middleman…

A suitable front for the collective investigation of a company shaken by the injustice of what had happened to their brother, however unpopular he'd been…

Ruby might not know Dogma, but the regiment _definitely_ knew Ruby.

"Who else is in on this?" Ahsoka blurted out, her mind spinning with the possibilities.

 _Say his name. Say Captain Rex_. If her noble captain was implicated in this enterprise, then Ahsoka would not only have the proof she needed, but the ironic justice of it all, the motivation of doing this for _him_ , would sit better in her bitter, anxious gut.

She would free Rex's precious _vod_ , break in and out of that Force-forsaken prison a second time. Get her hands dirty for him, when he couldn't wipe his own of her fast enough.

Heat surged down Ahsoka's arms as she imagined all sorts of scenarios in which she and Boba were successful, when she'd throw Dogma's name (hells, maybe Dogma himself, wouldn't that be a sight) and a thousand-and-one-other accusations in Rex's face like bad tihaar.

 _Trooper tihaar is best consumed hot; if your senses aren't scalded, it tastes like dishonorable death._

Funny, she'd been taught the same thing about revenge.

Ruby's large hand was still wrapped around hers, her red thumb gently caressing Ahsoka's knuckles. The touch wrenched Ahsoka out of her dark fantasy and back onto that sticky lethris sofa in that banal little room. Maybe this is what therapy outside the Temple looked like, if you ignored the debauchery on the other side of the permaglass, and the sullen, armoured youth picking at his teeth. A different sort of meditation: a muffled bass, a room with no chrono, and a buxom lady with weirdly callused hands and a sharp mouth who made you question where that ugly ring on your conscience came from.

A tear rolled down Ahsoka's cheek, and her anger turned to ash in her throat.

She wanted to hear Rex's name because if he believed Dogma didn't deserve prison, maybe he hadn't meant to leave her there, either.

"No one," was Ruby's eventual reply. "Information has been cross-referenced to the best of my ability, if that's what you're asking."

It wasn't. And she could probably tell as much from Ahsoka's glassy eyes, but it reminded Ahsoka of her earlier promise to be objective. This wasn't about her and Rex. This was about a job owed, a much-needed credit earned, and a prisoner freed. That she personally knew the prison and the prisoner was just … another coincidence of galactic proportions.

"Your gabby Guardsmen," began Ahsoka's new line of inquiry, as she eased her hand from Ruby's, "what did they have to say about a trooper being detained for so long? Did they have any advice?"

"What, about how a dancer could get one of the Republic's toy soldiers officially released? You'll forgive me if I didn't bother asking."

"I'm sure the Jedi could negotiate something," Ahsoka said, thinking out loud before realizing what a poor suggestion it was.

The news about Umbara had been as obscure as the planet itself. Even Rex's official report had been redacted—unless "mission accomplished; General KIA" was _really_ all he'd written, the remainder committed to some other record behind a closed door; she remembered waiting anxiously on the other side, hearing and feeling all the usual cacophonous noise and coiling pressure of Anakin's anger.

The atrocities of Pong Fucking Krell were hardly discussed in the Temple, either. Everyone just shook their heads and considered it an unfortunate byproduct of the war and Krell's generally abrasive personality. Apparently, Master Kcaj had even submitted designs for Krell's bust to the Council, marking him as one of "The Lost," but it was (almost) unanimously agreed that having removed Dooku's bust (another euphemism—Anakin had sliced it in half), replacing it with iconography of Krell would be "insensitive."

Ahsoka almost wished they had. She would have enjoyed taking her sabers to it.

Ruby scoffed. "And did they stick their necks out for you?"

They hadn't. And Ahsoka's own neck still went cold at the thought.

She scrubbed her hands over her face. This was insanely complicated. Fucking Fett. He was still sitting there in silence, like he knew her attempts to reason them out of this job were pointless.

"Can my _partner_ and I discuss this? Alone?" she asked.

When Ruby left the room with a peeved shrug and an irresponsible offer to refill Boba's drink, Ahsoka scooted closer to the kid. The kid who, somehow, had thought it a good idea to rope her into the one kriffing job in the entire galaxy that would be too emotionally compromising for her to accept, for all the same reasons she felt morally obligated to stay.

"For the record, I'm _not_ enjoying this," she said.

"Clearly. I thought you'd jump at the chance to whack a few of those meat cans who hunted you down."

Ahsoka breathed in through her nose and very slowly out through her mouth. Her knuckles and shins still ached from that brawl in the alley. That was another sensation she'd tried to drink away—and the feeling of having scarred a friend to win a spar.

"Well. You thought wrong."

Boba glowered at her. "So you won't take the job."

"I didn't say that. It's just ... her intel is fishy," Ahsoka began. "The army's a shitkicker on a good day, but they aren't going to keep a healthy trooper rotting in a detention center for a year, regardless of his crime."

The army actually had a very elegant solution for such clones—by its own standards, anyway—that involved entire companies deployed in "shock-and-fall" assaults predicated on nearly one-hundred-percent casualty rates, and battalions being drop-kicked into Separatist swamps, paving the way for repulsorcraft with their lives. But she wasn't supposed to know that "flotsam" wasn't _just_ a clever way to roll an acronym off your tongue, and divulging military secrets to a kid who was out to Fuck the System like it had been the moral of his favorite bedtime story was probably not a good idea.

If they were really going to do this—break a clone trooper out of military prison—she didn't want him burning the entire place down and calling it a diversion.

Boba appeared to consider her concerns and the selection of nuts he was picking through with equal indifference. "We can still take half upfront, and if he's not there, he's not there. Nothing to lose."

That he wasn't meeting her hysteria halfway wasn't surprising, but it was also aggravating in the extreme. She wanted to upend that bowl of nuts in his face.

" _You_ may have nothing to lose. I can't just go committing felonies because I'm unaffiliated now. What if—"

 _What if she wanted to go back?_

"What if what, we get _caught?_ " Boba sneered. "All prisons have holes. It's why we're both sitting here. And why I'm not worried about taking this job."

"Why _this_ job, though? Where's your normal band of merry mercs, anyway?"

He shrugged. "They opted out. This is per—"

He stopped himself, but Ahsoka guessed the rest. The real reason they were both still sitting there.

Boba Fett _did_ do personal.

"Dogma's a 'meat can' too," she quietly reminded him after a pause.

"Who I'm told killed a Jedi."

"There are a lot of Jedi killers in that prison."

Boba didn't project much into the Force—he was guarded, either naturally or by force of habit. But Ahsoka suddenly glimpsed the face of a clone that shouldn't exist; his brow was far too creased, his skin too worn even for an older Null, and too fleshy for a rationed trooper, whatever branch. And she understood what Boba left unsaid.

There were a lot of Jedi killers in that prison, but none with his father's face. _His_ face.

Dogma wasn't vod, but he was still … something, and it seemed even young Fett respected that. Especially if it gave him an excuse to stick it to the man.

 _Vod'kyramud_ indeed, she'd tell Rex. If she ever saw him again.

Ahsoka sighed, grabbed a handful of nuts, and tossed them back. "Alright," she said. Talking with her mouth full made her feel braver somehow. Made her feel like Anakin. "But nothing flashy. We're in and out. No killing. And once it's over, we go our separate ways."

"Agreed. You should go back to your day job anyway. You'd make a lousy bounty hunter."

She had only a moment to consider how bizarre it was to be given occupational advice by a juvenile delinquent, before there was a rap on the door and Ruby stepped inside again.

"Well?" she asked, crossing her chiseled arms and looking expectantly at Ahsoka, as if her reasonable concerns were the only reason Ruby wasn't already halfway to Scarif with Dogma on her arm.

"We'll do it," Boba cut in, much to Ahsoka's relief. The longer she could pretend she was just along for the ride, the better.

Ruby smiled, a genuine, unabashedly toothy smile, and pulled a small purse from her cleavage, leading Ahsoka to wonder what else she kept in there. She cast it between her red hands, the clanking of chips counting off the seconds before she spoke. "I'm not used to paying deposits on bounty hunters. How do I know you won't just cut and run?"

"You don't," said Boba. "But I don't see anyone else queuing up behind me, do you?"

Ahsoka rolled her eyes; she wouldn't trust the little snot either. But a thought struck her, and she unzipped her collar.

They'd stripped her of her beads and sabers like they'd stripped away her faith in nearly everything. But they couldn't take away her heritage. Besides it wasn't the Force or Jedi mantras that brought down that akul, it was her own courage.

Anakin had called it fearlessness. That wasn't necessarily true, but she was beginning to see why he valued it. It got the job done.

"I'll need that back," she said, standing up and handing the necklace she'd made from her akul teeth over to Ruby. "And if we kark up … give it to the five-oh-first."

Then, when the news broke ( _"Erstwhile Jedi Spirals out of Control! Embarks on Crime Spree with Dangerous Adolescent! Attempts to Steal Republic Property! Teenage Crisis or Separatist Scheme?"_ ), they might at least think better of her.

Ruby considered the necklace for moment before nodding and tossing the purse to Boba. He stuffed it into a pocket and rolled himself up, replacing his helmet.

"Let's go then, _partner_ ," he said.

The club had become crowded, though the atmosphere was still more languid than at 79s. Less inebriated bouncing, more indecent writhing. Not that Ahsoka was looking; she couldn't really afford to, lest she meet eyes she recognized—or rather, that recognized her. Boba at least had the advantage of a helmet, unmistakably Mandalorian, but not one she'd seen on any wanted holos recently. Happily, the throng parted before the towering Twi, with the two teens trailing close behind her like little chicks among serpents.

Ruby opened the door for them into the cool, damp night. "Can I do anything to help?" she asked as they stepped past her.

Boba fumbled in a pocket. "No offense, but you're huge and red. It'll be hard enough with Horns here—"

 _"Hey!"_

"Just be at the rendezvous when I give the signal, like we talked about," he continued, tossing Ruby a burn comm, one of those that came in pairs and expired after a few hours. "With the fastest ride you can find."

Ahsoka took a final look at Ruby standing in the doorway. She was worrying her talons again, her presence in the Force considerably … smaller than all her stateliness. Ahsoka wondered if that's how her own presence felt, frayed in a thousand directions.

Ruby gave her a curt nod. Ahsoka returned it. Maybe this was justice—or as close as she would come to it.


	3. Chapter 3

Ahsoka realized two seconds too late why Boba had let her drive.

They had just passed a safe distance above the Republic base's perimeter sensors, when his forearms suddenly came up under her arms, hands locking at the wrists, and his boots kicked her ankles out from the sides of the engine.

 _"My bike!"_ she wailed—or would have, if her guts hadn't just swooped into her throat as she was unexpectedly yanked back and down like a hawkbat snagged on a line.

She was falling backwards, unable to correct herself mid-air thanks to the armored madman glued to her spine. The Force, galvanized by her fear and shock, came alive along her body like a thousand pinpricks, but her senses were stiff, and she couldn't extend herself far enough, fast enough, to gauge the nearest flat surface.

After what felt like eons, when Ahsoka made peace with a number of griefs—that she'd hadn't said goodbye to Padmé; that she'd never gone streaking in the Room of a Thousand Fountains; that she'd never compared notes with Master Secura—Boba's jetpack kicked in. His forearms crushed her chest, and she winced as her headtail got pinched, but he brought them to a safe landing on an upper block of the base between two obsidian obtrusions.

"That was _my_ speederbike!" Ahsoka half-hissed, half-screeched when she caught her breath. She watched it careen off into the distance, before it was just a dark dot arcing down into the cityscape. "You could've warned me!"

"You said you didn't want to know details," Boba replied. He collapsed down against the wall, careful to keep his body in what little shadow there was, given the imperious uplighting that wanted to overpower the very stars. "Besides, if this works, you can buy a new one."

Hardly a satisfactory reply, although she was warming to the idea of splitting the pot, for all that she'd robbed him of Nyx. She groaned and reached behind her head, rubbing her pained headtail, certain his kriffing armor had cut it. It was _lengthening_ , didn't he know to be careful?!

She glanced around. From here they overlooked a landing strip, and even farther below, she could just see the tops of the obelisks that stood in the floodlit plaza spread before the gaping formal entrance.

"What do we do now?"

"We wait," he said. "That's half this job. Waiting."

Ahsoka snorted, joining him in a tired huddle of gangly knees and elbows on the obscured ledge. "Sounds like war."

His helmet turned almost imperceptibly towards her. Then he nodded.

She didn't ask what they were waiting for. He was right. She _didn't_ want to know. Once upon a time, sitting in ignorant silence on the knife-edge of an operation would have been a torment. She would have demanded a sitrep every five minutes, turning the objective over and over in her mind, until she could see it in four, pushing five, dimensions. Then she would open the lightshow herself—if Anakin hadn't beaten her to it, or Rex hadn't managed to catch hold of her skirt.

But that veil the older Jedi had always spoken of … that darkness creeping in around the edges … she could never really feel it then. The bright beacons of her Masters and the vibrancy of the men, unshakeable in the face of grinding horror, had blinded her to it.

Now she could hardly think for it, especially here. The _wrongness_ was so dense it was almost suffocating.

So it was easier not to think. She'd let Fett take point, until the moment she had to make good on her word and break back into her own worst memory.

And for a while he did. Pulling out crude holomaps, asking for her input and advice, and pointing out the area on the elevated landing strip thirty meters below them where _Laa'let_ ("Her name's Laa'let, by the way—so much for your Jedi sensitivity training") would extract them. Ahsoka assured him that the base's formidable appearance was just the overblown work of some guy who wore a cape in the kriffing _engineers_ , and that it was actually pretty lightly staffed. That didn't stop Boba from grilling her mercilessly about the security cams and armament of the guards, information she really hadn't absorbed when she'd been sprinting in a blind panic, expecting a blaster bolt to punch her between the shoulders.

Eventually, he must have stopped asking or she must have stopped answering, because Ahsoka was surprised when she felt Rex's hands tenderly rubbing the soreness from her headtail, and her cheek resting on the cool plastoid of a spaulder.

Ahsoka Tano had fallen asleep on Boba Fett.

She jerked away, mortified, and he seemed to do the same, yanking back the arm that must have been around her shoulder, as if he'd been burned. She felt her lekku flush, a physiologically confusing cocktail of embarrassment and exhilaration at the sensation of fingers caressing a very erogenous stretch of skin. He obviously hadn't known what touches like that meant—at least, the awkwardness rolling off him was that of a little hardass caught crying at a bad holodrama, not jerking off.

"Bacta," he mumbled into his lap, where he was hastily cleaning his fingers on his pants. "For the cut."

There was an open bacta packet on his knee, one of those that came a hundred to a box and were passed around like candy on the surface. There was hardly enough bacta in them to cover a large Koja nut, and their shelf life was questionable, but if they trickled down into the lower levels, Nyx had explained, they were worth a day's wage; his hands had been a mess for someone so young, and it wasn't just the nature of his job.

She was struck by the generosity.

But this was _dangerous_ , how Boba's familiar Force presence could lull her into a false sense of ease. How comfortable she was becoming around his hard edges, when a week ago he would have taken those beads on her head as license to shoot on sight.

Still, his ministrations had felt sincere. And he was proffering a flask.

"Thanks ... Corellian courage?" she ventured with an awkward laugh, taking it gratefully—if foolishly. But she was cold, and now seemed a stupid time to be renouncing bad habits.

Boba just scoffed. "The only courageous thing Corellians do is actually drink Corellian brew. You'd find better alcohol in a fresher sluice."

"Well then," she began, "because you're so full of natural Mando moxie _and_ considerably underage … _oya!_ "

She gave him a cursory toast and downed the lot, expecting him to protest. But when she blinked at him through watering eyes and returned the flask, it almost looked like he was smirking. That was Rex's smirk and she frayed a little bit more.

Boba replaced his helmet, stretched to his feet, and peered over the ledge, taking in the scene through his rangefinder and checking his chrono. He then stepped back against the wall and pressed his comm.

"Fett to Ruby, Fett to Ruby, do you copy, over."

Ahsoka frowned. "Uh, rude?"

"Phonemes, Tano. Military comm practice should be familiar to you."

"Maybe you could use your first name?"

"It's not that kind of relationship."

Laa'let interrupted them. _"Ruby to Fett, copy, loud and clear. Status?"_

"We're going in now. Give us at least a standard forty. Horns wants to take me on a tour of the ventilation system."

 _"Copy that. I'll be on my way. Ruby out."_

Boba flicked up his rangefinder and held out his arms, as if for the galaxy's most awkward embrace. Ahsoka just stared at him.

"Or you can jump down," he offered, gesturing at the thirty-meter drop. "Your call."

Ahsoka wavered in her determination to do this blind, and not just because she didn't care for another uncomfortable jetpack journey. The expression "caught between the Pykes and the Maw" came to mind.

Lately, using the Force felt like … stealing. It was difficult to untangle her abilities from her upbringing. The Force didn't belong to the Jedi, she well knew, but her conception of it was inextricably bound in mantras, rules, and precepts by which the rest of the galaxy didn't seem to abide. She still wasn't sure if she trusted herself not to misuse it.

But she also supposed falling to the dark side would involve a lot less hand-wringing and grief.

Ahsoka decided to jump.

When Boba dropped down beside her, they scrambled in the shadows towards a vent he'd spotted next to the loading bay entrance. She knelt down and Boba climbed onto her shoulders with more speed than grace, nearly stomping on her left lek and undoing his earlier goodwill with the bacta. He pried off the screen and wordlessly handed it down to her for safekeeping, before hauling himself up and inside. Ahsoka tensed, expecting the amateur _clank!_ of armor against the ductwork any moment, but it never came. She propelled herself up to the opening and climbed in after him, the effort of the jump almost as great as lifting all of Boba, and probably for the same reasons. Too little meditation and too much moping and day-drinking.

Once inside, Ahsoka shot a hand out to call the discarded grate into her palm. Funny, the Force came naturally to her, but it was a Jedi school that taught her this particular crime.

When she shimmied back around inside the vent, Boba was already a considerable distance along. She padded after him, tips alert for vibrations that would indicate troopers passing below.

Eventually, Boba paused at the top of a shaft, which—if the map was correct—would deposit them directly into Cresh-block's administration room, and where—if Laa'let was correct—they could use the keycards to retrieve the necessary data about Dogma's whereabouts. Then it was back into the air chute.

"Whoever's in there, we _stun_ ," Ahsoka whispered as she swung her legs into the vertical duct and scooted to the edge. "No shooting."

"I heard you the first time, Tano," came his scratchy, irritated reply.

Here went nothing. She let herself fall—a controlled descent, really, enjoying the feeling more than she should have. Her boots crashed through the grate, which in turn crashed directly onto the head of some hapless Guardsman, squashing him onto the floor like a scritter.

"Oh _shfat!_ " she yelped, hopping off the grate and bending over the trooper to check his vitals.

The heat of Boba's jetpack simmered over her tips as he descended into the room. "That's one way to do it," he quipped.

She frowned at him, but then he did a _thing_ —spun his blasters into their holsters—and she remembered why she was here.

Ahsoka scurried over to the computer and pulled out the first of the keycards, slotting it into the port until the screen flickered to life. Fingers trembling, she keyed in Dogma's number.

A file promptly appeared, but the details were classified, even the headshots blurred out. She removed the first keycard and slotted in the second, then the third; none satisfied the file's security measures. The only legible text appeared at the bottom, stating that the prisoner was the ward of CC-1010 and CT-09/999.

Ahsoka flicked back to the personnel log. Fox's number she knew, but the second one was intriguing. She typed it in, hoping CT-09/999 was on duty or they'd be inspecting every kriffing cell, and this would _definitely_ take longer than forty minutes.

As she considered whether she could slice into the closed-circuit cams and filter through the inmates that way, the new file popped up. Two headshots were displayed—one, the red and white helmet of a shock trooper; the other, the stern mug of a clone with a full-face tattoo, his hair slicked back from a severe peak on his forehead. He was a sergeant as of eight months ago, posted to Dorn-block, and his personnel record listed only the Coruscant Guard and a big fat resh, marked in red.

Resh for reassigned.

No one was just _reassigned_ to the Guard.

And those cryptic markings on his face, a face she could have sworn was sneering at her…

( _"My intel says Dogma was remanded to the Republic prison. And he's never left."_ )

Ahsoka pressed the button next to his listed posting, and a holomap of the eastern half of the base emerged from the console. The map narrowed in on a flashing red light, a tracking beacon, that indicated CT-09/999 was … in Dorn-block's processing room next door.

Her silence must have finally unnerved Boba. He stalked over to her shoulder from where he'd manually lowered the blast screen over the permaglass. "Is he here?"

Oh, he was here alright.

"I … I think he _works_ here."

There was a tense pause. As Boba stared at the file over her shoulder, Ahsoka watched him work through the same stages of confusion, doubt, and surprise that she was still traversing. But where she was struggling with acceptance—caught up in a thousand questions about who'd engineered his reassignment, and why Anakin had never been informed—Boba powered on straight through to determination.

"Still imprisonment. We take him anyway," he said suddenly.

Dogma once bled Republic red; Guardsman were steeped in it. Whatever the circumstances surrounding his reassignment, something at the back of her mind wondered if he might actually resent this.

"He might not come willingly," she said.

Boba produced a heinous-looking vibroblade from one of his thousand pockets. "They never do."

He stomped over to the dividing wall and was on the point of shoving it through when Ahsoka grabbed his arm. "Wait. Let me just … get a feel for the room."

In a rather innocent use of the Force, given the circumstances, she pressed her hand against the plasteel and extended her consciousness into the space beyond. One lifeform. Half-asleep by the feel of him, unsurprising in this mid-shift lull. Boba had timed this well.

She nodded but silently indicated for him to go easy with it.

Boba didn't heed her advice. He gave a running slice with the blade in a circle, and it made an impressive pass through the plasteel with a sound that was more of a whine than the buzz she was accustomed to.

The trooper had just time enough to swivel in his chair towards the noise, before Boba was through the resultant hole and pistol-whipping him without so much as a good morning. With a _clack!_ that always made her cringe, the trooper collapsed to the floor. Ahsoka held back for a moment, tips straining to catch any hint that their forced entry had been noticed.

Then she lashed out.

"Great, now we have to _carry_ him—if it's even him!"

"Oh, right. You were just going to negotiate with him into leaving with us."

Ahsoka ground her teeth. Had she ever been this difficult?

She dropped to her knees and gently removed the trooper's helmet. It was Dogma alright—she recognized his discomfited, acidic twang in the Force, and at this distance she could make out the faint separation between the clean lines of his original tattoo and the additional squiggles, hastily done, a simulacrum of the earlier pattern. He looked more serene than she'd ever remembered him, the longer hairs on the crown of his head defying the strict order of military-grade product, some concoction of blaster polish and extra-firm gel.

"Well?" Boba asked, crouching next to her.

"It's him. It'll be easier if—"

Ahsoka noticed the lights do something funny before the alarms interrupted her. The dormant base was suddenly awash in flashing, strident noise.

"Too fucking early, Ruby!" Boba swore as he shot down the blast door, hiding them from any commotion in the corridor.

Ahsoka froze. Those particular klaxons had punctuated her nightmares on that stupid couch for a week. "Those _aren't_ the perimeter alarms." She scrambled to the computer screen, where a diagram showed a red dot flaring in Krill-block.

"There's an incident on the other side of the base" she said, returning to Dogma, prepared to deadlift him onto her shoulders and at least go down looking a hero. "We should scram now while someone else is the life of the party."

She'd just maneuvered the trooper into a standing position at her front when she heard the ominous words _"Hold on!"_ Suddenly, her knees were taken out from behind, and she and Dogma both were scooped up and wheeled out of the room.

Ahsoka was reminded that crazy stunts were also not the sole purview of the Jedi, as she held onto an unconscious clone in her lap and careened down corridors of a military prison in a rolly chair, propelled by a Mando kid with a jetpack.

She had to stop hanging out with Fetts.

Dogma actually proved handy prop, largely shielding her from general view and security cams as they made their escape. Every now and then, when a cluster of guards appeared, she'd throw an arm out and project a general wave of energy that sent them crashing backwards like oversized rumble-pins.

Either Boba was navigating by some GPS in his helmet or he possessed a wizard sense of direction, because they were quickly approaching the expansive exit onto the landing strip—and none too soon. The great triangular teeth of the portal's blast-door were rising slowly from the corners.

"Fett, the door, the _door!_ " Ahsoka screeched, clutching Dogma even tighter to her chest as she coiled up for a daring leap through the gap—

The blast-door suddenly froze open. She'd been drawing too heavily, too crudely, on the Force for an accident of such finesse. That _wasn't_ her. And when she saw the tip of a yellow lightsaber pierce through the control panel from the opposite side, she felt her guts curdle.

This was it. The army and the Jedi were closing ranks. Now they were sending _Temple Guards_ to apprehend her. It'd be the Citadel for her, for sure—or whatever Force-forsaken place they'd sent Barriss.

But neither her carbon-frozen soul nor her panicked squeals could halt Boba's momentum. When the base of the chair inevitably collided with the overlapping panels of the door, Togruta, teenager, and trooper were sent crashing through the gap and into an unceremonious heap on the tarmac.

"I'm a little hurt, Tano…" came a raspy voice as Ahsoka felt Dogma heaved off her prone body. She _must_ have landed on her head, because that was _Ventress_ tossing him over her shoulders. A cool finger trailed down Ahsoka's cheek. "I would've taught you everything you wanted to know. But I get it. He is a very familiar face."

Nothing really made much sense until later, when Ahsoka blinked through blurred vision and an aching skull to find herself scrunched up in the floorboard of a moving vehicle, the red and white gauntlet of a Guardsman dangling in front of her face.

She turned her head and came nose-to-nose with Dogma.

The uncertainty of how she came to be in a speeder driven by a red Twi'lek dancer bothered her less than new helmeted head in the passenger's seat.

"Ummm. What _happened?_ " Ahsoka enquired generally of the two mismatched ladies sitting up front in companionable silence.

Laa'let glanced back in surprise at the noise, as if she hadn't expected either piece of cargo to wake so soon. "Had a last-minute addition to the strike team," she answered, casually indicating to the ex-Sith.

Ventress bent round towards Ahsoka and flipped up her faceguard, one brow cocked over her purple eyes. "I disconnected the security cams, set off a false alarm in another block, silenced the point-defence guns and perimeter sensors, and generally saved your skin. You're welcome."

Still a mistress of subtlety, then.

"And Boba?" Ahsoka asked, curious about her partner's disappearance, but not exactly surprised. He wasn't a backseat kind of kid.

"Pro-bono work offends him. Especially mine," she answered with a shrug, before twisting back into her seat.

That ... didn't answer much.

Ahsoka's patchy attention was caught by the blinking light on Dogma's wrist comm. Military-issue: short-range tracking, long-range and secure single-frequency comms. Someone was already missing him. She popped it off his gauntlet, flipping it over in one hand as she absently ran her fingers through his hair with the other.

Who knew if Dogma would wake in a fury—if he'd be crushed by the same sort of deserter's guilt that weighed on her, or if he'd grasp his freedom with both hands. But by giving him _some_ chance at autonomy, a life beyond drudgery in a prison he couldn't leave anyway, she began to realize possibilities of her own.

Ahsoka peered out over the lip of the speeder, breathing in the crisp air of a surface dawn and feeling fresher than she had all week—although it'd been even longer since she'd seen the inside of one of those. She still didn't know where she belonged in the grand scheme of things—up with the Jedi, down with the Laa'lets of the galaxy, or somewhere in the middle—but sharing some bantha sliders with Rex at Biscuit Baron suddenly seemed like a good place to start.

"Hey!" she shouted, lurching forward on her knees to tap Laa'let's elbow. She indicated to the sign she'd spotted. "Drop me off there."

Laa'let pulled over to the landing platform and Ahsoka clambered out. She stood there awkwardly for a moment, wondering what the appropriate etiquette was for bidding farewell to your client and two-time enemy-cum-rescuer. Ventress sat silent and unmoved behind her helmet, like one of those mannequins used to evade single-passenger fines in certain skylanes.

Eventually, Laa'let reached into the console and lobbed something towards Ahsoka. "Take care of yourself," she said with a faint smile, before speeding off to some port unknown.

Ahsoka looked down; it was her akul necklace, tied around a small pouch of chips. For all her trouble, she hadn't expected a payout. Maybe this was the rest of Boba's share. Either way, it was lucky, because war-time inflation had hit bantha sliders too, and she knew Rex wouldn't be good for it.

If he even came.

The restaurant was quiet, so she didn't feel guilty appropriating an entire booth. She dug out Dogma's commlink from her pocket and placed it on a patch of the filmy tabletop that wasn't smudged with grease or stained with blue sauce. Her fingers ghosted across the buttons too many times to count before she made a deal with herself: she couldn't order until she worked up the nerve to actually press them. The smell of fried breakfast finally gave her the requisite courage.

 _7567._

The outgoing comm light flashed once, twice, six times, and Ahsoka thought her heart might actually break if it blinked out. What if they'd shipped out early for Ringo Vinda?

But then she heard his voice, hesitant and groggy, like he was still in bed, rumbling up her montrals even through the comm. _"Captain Rex here."_

Ahsoka almost faltered. Both at the mental image, and the uncertainty of what to say to a lover bound up in a nightmare and a week of endless nights.

But it was a new dawn, and she was ready to wake up.

"... Hey Rexster. Think the war will miss you if you join me for breakfast? I'm buyin'."


End file.
